THE COST OF LIVING
Better pay.
Still a squeeze.
Pay buys more overall than a generation ago. But the bills you cannot avoid can tell a very different story.
1996–2025 · Great Britain median full-time pay before tax, compared with UK prices. These are buying-power changes, not bill increases.
See why the average misses the squeeze ↓01 / THE SQUEEZE
Your bills do not rise together
Electricity prices nearly doubled over this decade. Food rose faster than the overall basket. Spending more of your budget on these items changes how inflation feels.
Starting with £100 in 2015 · UK annual prices, 2015–2025
Prices, not spending or wages. National averages, not a receipt for identical products. Sources and full annual values.
The same rise hits a tight budget harder
For every £100 spent, lower-income households devote about twice as much to food, housing and energy.
Under £24,800 a year£40.9 on these essentials
Over £64,200 a year£20.2 on these essentials
Food, housing and energy Other spending
Survey-based evidence · Living Costs and Food Survey
Share of spending, not income. Housing here excludes mortgage payments, Council Tax and NI rates. Lower spending does not prove needs are met. All five income groups and methods.
02 / WHO FEELS IT
For some families, the squeeze reaches the food shop
Food insecurity means money or resources constrain access to food. Social renters with children had an estimated rate of 33%, against 8.6% across all households.
All households: 8.6%
Social renters: 27.7%
Private renters: 12.1%
Social renters with dependent children: 33%
Family Resources Survey. Groups overlap. Estimates describe the 30 days before interview. Uncertainty is not plotted; this comparison does not prove what caused the gap. Each bar uses a 0–100% scale.
Survey-based evidence · weighted household records
Explore all household groups and sample sizes
| Group | Food insecure (%) | Very low food security (%) | Sample base |
|---|---|---|---|
| All households | 8.6 | 4.6 | 16,290 |
| Social renters | 27.7 | 16.5 | 2,720 |
| Private renters | 12.1 | 5.8 | 2,290 |
| Mortgage / part own part rent | 3.6 | 1.6 | 4,060 |
| Outright owners | 2.1 | 0.9 | 7,060 |
| With dependent children | 11.9 | 6.0 | 4,080 |
| Without dependent children | 7.4 | 4.1 | 12,210 |
| With a disabled adult or child | 11.8 | 6.7 | 9,650 |
| Without a disabled adult or child | 4.3 | 1.8 | 6,640 |
| Social renters with dependent children | 33.0 | 18.0 | 710 |
| Private renters with dependent children | 14.7 | 6.9 | 830 |
FCA Financial Lives · UK adults · survey-based estimate. Different population and date from the household food-security figures.
Explore the picture across the UK
Pressure is not a simple North–South divide. These are adults’ finances, not local price rankings or city estimates.
Northern Ireland: 27%
Wales: 25%
England: 24%
Scotland: 23%
Percentage of adults. Each bar uses a 0–100% scale.
North East: 29%
North West: 28%
London: 27%
Yorkshire and the Humber: 26%
West Midlands: 25%
East Midlands: 23%
South West: 21%
South East: 21%
East of England: 20%
Percentage of adults. UK benchmark 24%. Each bar uses a 0–100% scale.
TRY IT / YOUR HOUSEHOLD
Find your own squeeze
Choose a view. Change the numbers. See what matters to your budget. Your entries stay on this page; they are not saved or sent.
What rose fastest in your budget?
UK annual averages, 2015–2025. Prices, not wages or household spending.
Annual values and calculation
| Year | Food and non-alcoholic drinks | Electricity | Gas | Rent price proxy | CPI: all items | CPIH: all items |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 | 100.0 |
| 2016 | 97.6 | 99.8 | 94.1 | 102.4 | 100.7 | 101.0 |
| 2017 | 99.8 | 106.5 | 93.1 | 104.2 | 103.4 | 103.6 |
| 2018 | 101.8 | 115.7 | 96.5 | 105.2 | 105.9 | 106.0 |
| 2019 | 103.2 | 124.1 | 96.2 | 106.6 | 107.8 | 107.8 |
| 2020 | 103.9 | 124.3 | 86.5 | 108.1 | 108.7 | 108.9 |
| 2021 | 104.2 | 132.5 | 86.7 | 109.5 | 111.6 | 111.6 |
| 2022 | 115.5 | 197.5 | 164.7 | 112.9 | 121.7 | 120.5 |
| 2023 | 132.3 | 224.6 | 195.0 | 118.8 | 130.5 | 128.6 |
| 2024 | 135.8 | 190.5 | 146.2 | 128.0 | 133.9 | 132.9 |
| 2025 | 141.5 | 192.8 | 150.5 | 136.0 | 138.4 | 138.0 |
We multiply each starting amount by its category’s end index divided by its starting index, then sum. Missing prices are not treated as zero.
Start with four monthly bills
Enter what you spent each month in 2015. We apply national price changes to those amounts. This covers four costs, not your full budget or exact shopping basket.
Same energy use. Different bill.
Compare July–September with October–December 2026 prices, using the same energy use. Great Britain average Direct Debit capped rates; excludes Northern Ireland and fixed tariffs. These are annual bill equivalents, not a forecast or maximum bill.
Starting usage is Ofgem’s 2026 illustration, not your measured consumption. Change it using your bills.
Rates and workings
| Rate | Jul–Sep 2026 | Oct–Dec 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Electricity p/kWh | 26.11 | 26.32 |
| Electricity standing p/day | 57.19 | 54.83 |
| Gas p/kWh | 7.33 | 7.97 |
| Gas standing p/day | 29.04 | 29.68 |
Bill = (usage × unit rate + 365 × standing charge) ÷ 100, summed across connected fuels. October rates are marked provisional in the retained source. Rounded rates can differ slightly from the full-precision headline.
What is left when the bills are paid?
Use monthly net household income including benefits. Average annual bills over 12 months, use bills after discounts and avoid counting any expense twice. Blanks are missing, not zero.
This includes your full mortgage and debt payments. Money left over still needs to cover savings and any costs you have missed.
Experimental calculator, not an official inflation measure. Sources, alternative benchmarks and limitations
THE TEST THAT MATTERS
More money left.
Fewer unmet needs.
Better average pay is progress. It is not enough if essential bills absorb the gain. Judge living standards by what households have left, whether they can afford necessities and whether they can cope with a surprise bill.
03 / THE WAY FORWARD
Protect income now. Reduce unavoidable bills next.
A practical response needs both. The sequence below is a proposal for delivery—not a funded or fully costed programme.
Start now
Get support to households missing out
Who: DWP and councils
Use existing benefit and Council Tax support checks. Offer assisted applications, then check whether eligible households actually receive support.
Track take-up, payment delays and food insecurity.
Trade-off and full assessment
Targeting can miss people just above thresholds; widening support needs a published cost.
Income-support optionsDeliver next
Make homes cheaper to run
Who: Government, councils and housing providers
Identify homes with high running costs, fund suitable upgrades, commission qualified installers and check work after completion.
Track completed upgrades and energy use alongside bills—not grants announced.
Trade-off and full assessment
Upfront funding and installer capacity constrain delivery. Savings depend on each home and its use.
Energy optionsSustain the gains
Bring housing costs within reach
Who: Government, councils and housing providers
Agree funded housing programmes, secure land and approvals, build with infrastructure, then track homes completed and occupied.
Track housing costs relative to income, after-housing income and homelessness.
Trade-off and full assessment
New homes take time and investment. Delivery must include infrastructure and local needs.
Housing optionsGo deeper
Household spending · Income and living standards · Housing · Household costs outlook
Sources and method
The charts combine published evidence and licensed household-record analysis with the calculations described below. Their periods differ; they are not a single survey of the same households. Figures describe their stated dates, not conditions today.
Pay and prices: calculation, coverage and limitations
Buying-power change = ((pay in 2025 ÷ pay in 1996) ÷ (price index in 2025 ÷ price index in 1996) − 1) × 100. Pay is median gross weekly full-time earnings in Great Britain. Price indices are UK annual averages. Northern Ireland is excluded from this pay series. The endpoints span 29 years; they do not follow the same people. Historical earnings survey methods changed between NES and ASHE. This is not household disposable income or a personal inflation measure.
ONS historical median earnings · Overall CPIH prices · Food prices · Electricity prices
Household budgets: Living Costs and Food Survey
UK, April 2024–March 2025. Published weighted household means; rounded sample of 5,000 households. Income fifths adjust for household size. Food and non-alcoholic drinks plus housing, fuel and power are divided by total expenditure, including other expenditure. This is a ratio of group means, not the average of individual budget shares. Housing excludes mortgage payments, Council Tax and Northern Ireland rates; it is not a complete measure of essential costs. Sampling and non-response affect estimates; confidence intervals are not shown.
ONS Family spending workbook 1, table 3.1E5 · Full spending breakdown and downloads. Release: 11 June 2026.
Household income and poverty: Family Resources Survey and linked benefit records
DWP Households Below Average Income, 2024/25, main findings and tables 2.1 and 3.1. Disposable income is adjusted for household composition and inflation. Relative low income means below 60% of the current median. Benefit-record linkage introduced a break in the historical series; the comparison here uses 2023/24 and 2024/25 within the revised series, not a spliced 30-year income trend.
Financial pressure: Financial Lives survey
Financial Conduct Authority, UK adults aged 18+, 17,950 interviews, 5 February–16 June 2024; the publisher calls this May 2024. Random address sampling, predominantly online with telephone participation, weighted estimates. Low financial resilience uses the original financial-only definition: financial difficulty, heavy burden or low savings under the source criteria. It differs from the updated measure that also includes emotional resilience. Group estimates have sampling uncertainty; no significance test between groups is calculated here.
Financial Lives 2024 key findings, chapter 3 · Regional results and definitions, pages 43–49. Published May 2025.
Household-record analysis: definitions, weights and limitations
FRS 2024/25: household weight gross4; foodsec scores 3–10 define food insecurity, 6–10 very low food security. Tenure uses tentyp2, children depchldh, and disability diswhha1/diswhhc1 (wider Equality Act definition). All analysed food-security scores and weights were valid. Estimates use at least 100 observations per group and at least ten positive and negative responses. Sample bases are rounded to ten. These are analysis safeguards, not UKDS disclosure certification.
Design-based confidence intervals and independent analytical review are outstanding. The 8.6% overall estimate rounds to the publisher's 9%. LCF and FRS are separate samples, not linked households. LCF food spending averaged £73.6 weekly in the anonymised records, close to the published £73.7. Its anonymised total-expenditure variable has a different definition from the published total, so it is not used to calculate budget shares here. The earlier income-fifth chart continues to use the published table.
DWP (2026), Family Resources Survey 2024–2025, UKDS SN 9563 · ONS and Defra (2026), Living Costs and Food Survey 2024–2025, second edition, UKDS SN 9603 · Download aggregate results and methods
Essentials calculator: sources, alternatives and limitations
ONS is the producer; CPI and CPIH are indices. The opening pay comparison uses CPIH overall and CPI food/electricity categories. The calculator uses annual national ONS indices for 2015–2025 and Ofgem's GB default-tariff rates. Its four-category scenario is not a complete household basket or an independent supermarket transaction panel. It retains substitution and quality adjustments within ONS categories. No claim of superior statistical accuracy is made.
JRF/Loughborough Minimum Income Standard offers a separate needs benchmark; changes to its basket are not all inflation. Which? grocery tracking provides retailer comparisons. Neither is numerically combined into this calculator.
- Office for National Statistics: CPI index: food and non-alcoholic drinks
- Office for National Statistics: CPI index: electricity
- Office for National Statistics: CPI index — gas (04.5.2), monthly
- Office for National Statistics: Private rents (CPI component)
- Office for National Statistics: Consumer prices index (CPI), all items
- Office for National Statistics: CPIH all items index
- Ofgem: Energy price cap — electricity unit rate (direct debit)
- Ofgem: Energy price cap — electricity standing charge (direct debit)
- Ofgem: Energy price cap — gas unit rate (direct debit)
- Ofgem: Energy price cap — gas standing charge (direct debit)
Download price history, rates, definitions and source hashes. National proxies are not city or county estimates.
UK Data Service and evidence review
UK Data Service provides access to household research including Living Costs and Food, Family Resources Survey and Understanding Society. This page combines published aggregates with our weighted analysis of licensed Family Resources Survey and Living Costs and Food records. No respondent records are published. Understanding Society longitudinal results are not included. Public reports can be read without a UKDS account; access conditions differ for microdata.
Source checks and calculations by an agent, 18 October 2026. Independent analytical review has not been completed. Sources and methods remain available above so the conclusions can be checked.
Income, poverty and the full spending comparison
For the 1996–2025 median gross full-time pay comparison, food buying power changed by +18.2%, alongside the overall and electricity figures at the top of this page.
UK median household income rose 5% after inflation in 2024/25, before and after housing costs; both increases were statistically significant. At the same time, 20% of people were in relative low income after housing costs (95% interval 18–21%). The annual poverty change was not statistically significant. This is disposable income adjusted for household size, unlike the opening gross-pay comparison.
Households on under £24,800 a year: 40.9%
Households on £24,800 to £35,600 a year: 35.4%
Households on £35,600 to £46,900 a year: 30.9%
Households on £46,900 to £64,200 a year: 26.4%
Households on over £64,200 a year: 20.2%
Share of spending, not income. Excludes mortgage payments, Council Tax and NI rates from housing. Each bar uses a 0–100% scale.
FCA low-resilience estimates: all adults 24%, renters 46%, annual household income below £15,000 48%, £50,000 or more 13%. Groups overlap; these associations do not isolate causes.